{ Category Archives } tech

I just ran into this obscure problem with Puppet. I’m writing it down in the hopes I will remember not to do something like this again… $ sudo puppetd –test –noop /opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/network/http_pool.rb:41:in `read_cert’: super: no superclass method `read_cert’ (NoMethodError) from /opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/executables/client/certhandler.rb:62:in `read_cert’ from /opt/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/puppet/executables/client/certhandler.rb:24:in `read_retrieve’ from […]

Awhile back I was noticing I was definitely losing emails. As one can might imagine, this is a scary experience since this brings into doubt if the mail system under use is doing something funny to the mail. My first place to look was in the mail logs for the SMTP server and other associated […]

Awhile back I installed Ruby 1.9.1 in such a way as to co-exist with my current Ruby installation [1], [2] (I should use rvm [3] these days…) However, one issue that cropped up during an IRB session was I could not copy and paste Japanese characters into the IRB repl. This is very very painful […]

I have a love-hate affair with Capistrano. It is a great tool if you are a Ruby person and need to do something NOW on a bunch of machines. But the docs are in a constant state of suck from my point of view. The Capify.org website helps for remembering the ‘simple’ details on what Capistrano […]

With the announcement of OpenSolaris 2009.06 I thought it would be appropriate to blog a little about a tool I had been writing to help myself play with Zones a bit easier. My overall goals were the following: Have each zone configured with its own virtual NIC (Crossbow) Allow easy creation of zones without having […]

After looking at /etc/inet/hosts I noticed a loghost entry. Being a Solaris newbie I was curious to see why this entry was there. A quick Google brought up this nice discussion: http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?… Summary, don’t delete it.

On small LAN networks that do not have an internal DNS server. There is a nice technology called ZeroConf that uses multicast to enable name lookup resolution. It has been baked into OS X for quite some time now. Linux and other UNIX flavors have been picking this up as well. OpenSolaris also includes this […]

Tom has a great summary on why. One challenge for the cowboy sys admin is on how to keep oneself engaged while making their job basically… a walk in the park. One thing I have found helpful in creating lists is to be dogmatic about writing docs as you are doing something somewhere, anywhere and […]

After reading Game Developers and Porn Stars I started recollecting an earlier time in my life. At that point in time I was considering a life as a game developer. I had heard the rumors that life as a game developer was a meat grinder and had really long hours. I spent time reflecting on […]

Seems someone else ran into issues while trying to deploy god. While, I don’t think god sucks I definitely don’t endorse it. At this point I would only use it under the following conditions: Need for a process monitor tool with more dynamic configuration setups. This is where god really shines against monit’s simpler understanding […]

I had a need for inserting the name of the current file into a bunch of files I was editing. I was pretty sure there was a function to do this in vim and after some searching I was right. To insert the current filename. In Insert Mode, type CTRL-r % and it will insert […]

A nice back story on Writely (what is now known as Google Docs) via HN. I particularly like this snippet [The creators] have been in the application software business for nearly 20 years… they understand the user problem so deeply that they can blend the advantages of each new platform with ‘document authoring problem’ to […]

2009 01 02hoangageekComments Off on Writely, years in the making, months in execution

Akihabara as many people in Japan know was originally the home for buying electronic goods in the Tokyo area. It still holds that reputation however the Anime Otaku crowd have changed the face of Akihabara to also accomodate their needs and desires. One thing that is interesting is the origin of place name Akihabara. A […]

2008 12 22hoangageekjapanComments Off on On the origins of the name Akihabara

After having dain bramaged myself for years with Linux usage. I had gotten spoiled into believing an OS should make it simple to do the following: 1. Shutdown computer 2. Swap around hardware components 3. Restart 4. Life is good However any techie should tell you this is a pipe dream on Windows. Mac users […]

I’ve been silently scanning some Solaris blogs and skimming some of the appropriate websites for documentation on some of the more interesting features of Solaris for awhile now. One thing that requires time to adjust to is the number of acronyms that the Solaris community has to describe their technologies. One of these is called […]